Officials are warning Nevadans of a scam by a Las Vegas company claiming to be able to save homeowners hundreds of dollars on their property taxes for a $189 fee.
"When I saw a copy of their letter, all the bells and whistles went off," said Senior Deputy Attorney General John McGlamery.
"An inquiry of ours is probably going to take at least a month, and a lot of people could get snookered by then, so we wanted to get this warning out," McGlamery said. "This is definitely a scam."
Carson City residents started receiving the letter from Property Tax Review Board, listing a post office box in Las Vegas as an address.
The form lists the recipient's property location and description, and an assessment for the 2009 tax roll. It lists a proposed assessment by the company showing a savings of hundreds of dollars to the property owner.
The company proposed to save Carson City residents Thelma Blackman more than $600 and Dorsey Hoffman more than $500.
Hoffman said the offer looked legitimate.
"It looked very official on its face, but it said in tiny print, 'not a government agency,' and it was information (about us) they easily would have been able to get off the tax rolls," Hoffman said. "We figured that if we could have saved money on our taxes, it would have been handled locally."
Thelma Blackman was also surprised by the notice when it arrived in the mail Thursday.
"I looked at that amount and thought, 'Gee that'd be nice'," she said. "There's a lot of people that would have jumped at it. But I wasn't going to send $189. That sounded too good to be true."
She was afraid the offer might be targeting the elderly.
"I would hate to see people part with their money," she said.
Property Tax Review Board operates in Arizona, Nevada and California and is headquartered in California, McGlamery said.
The state of California in May sued the company and its owners, Michael McConville and his brother Sean McConville, McGlamery said.
According to that lawsuit, the McConville brothers billed tens of thousands of homeowners throughout California nearly $200 each for property tax reassessment services that were almost never performed and are available free from local tax assessors.
Few, if any, of the assessment appeals were completed, the suit alleges. In addition, the Ventura County District Attorney's Office has charged one of the brothers, Sean McConville, with 20 felony counts for criminal conduct stemming from his property tax reassessment operations, McGlamery said.
Calls started coming into the assessor's office Thursday afternoon, said Carson City Assessor Dave Dawley.
"When people receive their assessment notice in November, they can appeal it themselves without spending any money," Dawley said.
"People could be paying for something (from the Las Vegas company) and they're not going to get any relief. That's what scares me," he said.
Dawley said the Property Tax Review Board's frequently asked questions on the back of the form give answers applicable to California's statutes, not Nevada's, and there is no indication the company is aware of Nevada's property tax cap.
A call to the phone number listed on the form Thursday was answered by a woman who would only identify herself as Rebecca.
She said the company is "a legitimate organization" and that people are under no obligation to accept the offer.
"If we find that they are not eligible for a reduction, they can get a full refund," she said.
She likened the company to an H&R Block tax preparation service where people can do their own work, but are also welcome to pay someone else to do it for them.
E-mails to the company were not answered.�